Ben Brooks is getting back into beekeeping, and along with buzzing 'critters' comes a desire to keep them safe.
Using a hive monitor connected to Home Assistant, he displays and records temperature, humidity, light and weight readings.
The ESP32 microcontroller housed in the case sits on a custom PCB that also includes interfaces for temperature, humidity and light sensors. Load sensors located in each corner of the hive monitor its weight.
"Everything works pretty well and looks a lot neater and cleaner than the early designs," Brooks says of the first tests of the system. "Also, I already have a weather station in my house (where the hive is located), so I can use the outside temperature (and rain, which I can play with too). I decided to use 'apexcharts-card' to visualize the data, as the native chart map has a lot of limitations, especially when using multiple sensors with different values."
Brooks plans to replace the load cell system with strain gauges to improve reliability.
The ESP32 microcontroller housed in the case sits on a custom PCB that also includes interfaces for temperature, humidity and light sensors. Load sensors located in each corner of the hive monitor its weight.
"Everything works pretty well and looks a lot neater and cleaner than the early designs," Brooks says of the first tests of the system. "Also, I already have a weather station in my house (where the hive is located), so I can use the outside temperature (and rain, which I can play with too). I decided to use 'apexcharts-card' to visualize the data, as the native chart map has a lot of limitations, especially when using multiple sensors with different values."
Brooks plans to replace the load cell system with strain gauges to improve reliability.